Pittsburghers know that the times are out of joint. Somehow they're expecting the prosperity to blow up in their faces.
Fortune Magazine, 1941

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Fountains ! Trees! Flowers! When Pittsburgh found such things bizarre...

I'll be lazy and just play off a front page story in the PG today on the re-opening of Mellon Square in Downtown Pittsburgh. PG: Coming out party for Mellon Square. Some may ask what the big deal is? The story touches upon the greater appreciation for the small-ish park in the past, but back in the day virtually anything green in Downtown Pittsburgh was probably something to take note of. Point State Park might come to mind, but it would not be open for decades (August 1974 to be precise) after Mellon Square first came into being.

So to pull from the archives here... this 1963 cartoon gives you a feel for how big a deal Mellon Square Park once was. Of course to me the cartoon has a lot of other symbolism for changing Downtown, and a changing Pittsburgh. Gulf? Gone! Alcoa? Moved across the river. The Penn-Sheraton? The Mellon-US Steel building..... But still Koppers has remained in both corporate structure and location. That is getting pretty rare in Pittsburgh business history.